


The Absence of Water

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean's Pendant, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e16 Dark Side of the Moon, Gen, Sam Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-08
Updated: 2010-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because it couldn't be left behind in the trash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Absence of Water

**Author's Note:**

> _Originally posted April 8, 2010_

Sam stood in the hotel room and stared at the closed door between him and his brother. The clunk of the pendant hitting the bottom of the trash can had been louder than any gunshot, and hurt more.

He couldn't control what he'd experienced in Heaven, any more than Dean could. Heaven showed Sam's best memories as being time spent with other people's families, of leaving, of being alone. Why? There were lots of good memories with Dean, with Dad too. Why hadn't they turned up?

That Thanksgiving dinner, Dean had driven him to the house and would pick him up after. Sam had snagged a turkey leg and a piece of pie for him. Being alone in Flagstaff, Sam had known if he couldn't handle it he could go back; Dean would probably tear a strip off him for leaving, but he would be there. Stanford... he'd known that Dean wasn't the one telling him not to come back. That if he came back, wherever Dad and Dean were, Dean would welcome him, even if Dad wouldn't.

Dean just... was. All through growing up, more often than not, Dad wasn't there, Dean was. Sam didn't really think of it because it wasn't something he had to think about. Dean was just always there. Like air, or gravity.

A fish never thinks about water.

They spent most of their lives closer than any family, living in ratty apartments and the same ever-changing twelve by sixteen hotel rooms. It was hard to get time alone, time to think. Sam escaped to school and libraries, but he knew Dean would always be there when he went back, smirking about Sam's bookworm habits and offering cold pizza or a bag of nachos.

Sam never doubted Dean would be there until Dean started hunting. He remembered when Dean told him he was going to be a hunter, like Dad. Sam had been twelve. He remembered the feeling of rage, the feeling that Dad was taking his brother from him and putting Dean in danger. It was Dean's choice, and not the first time he'd been hunting, but the feeling was there. Irrational.

When Dean had died and gone to Hell, in the dark scramble of days right after, the thought Sam had shoved away most violently was "How dare Dean leave?" An ugly thought, selfish, rooted in childish solipsism, but in the worst patches of night it rose up and caught him off-guard. The last thought of a fish drowning in the air, angry at the absent water.

Dean was alive now. He was whole. He wasn't in Hell. They were together, a family. It was them against the world. But...

Sam bent and retrieved the pendant from the trash. The metal had dulled from the bright thing he'd given Dean so long ago, worn and pitted. He folded the cord into his hand.

He had to make things right. Somehow.

\- - -  
(that's all.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty sure that the fish and water metaphor is subconsciously adapted from something in a book, possibly one of the Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold, which I recommend to everyone.


End file.
